Thinks going by the book is going the long way. Doesn't follow plans - or roads! Cuts across parking lots, sidewalks, backyards to get where he's going. Travels at 110mph, range 800 miles, his 4-wheel drive handles roughest terrain, climbs grades up to 50 degrees. Carries turret-mounted mortar cannon that shoots armour-piercing shells.
First/Last Comic Appearance (US) - Issue 41, June 1988 / Issue 47, December 1988
First/Last Comic Appearance (UK) - Issue 98, January 31st 1987 / Issue 245, November 25th 1989
First/Last Cartoon Appearance - Episode 66 (Season 3 #1), September 1st 1986 / Episode 83 (Season 3 #18), November 11th 1986
Figure Details
AKA 'Bushwhacker'
Manufacturer - iGear
Toyline - Mini Warriors
Additions/Mods:
- Added an Autobot symbol to the chest
- Added Autobot symbols to the doors
- Added various Reprolabels
Review
You may well have no idea who Outback is, because he was used pretty sparingly in the cartoon. He arrived with a whimper in the post-movie lull, and received zero character development. In the UK comic it was a different matter, as he was instrumental in stopping the
Wreckers executing
Optimus Prime, after they wrongly deduced he was an impostor. He was nearly torn in half by a guardian robot, before Prime nursed his wounds and ultimately got him patched up, once the Wreckers realised their mistake. Then he was pretty much absent from any fiction again, but the plucky little Autobot had made his mark on me. Let's hope that iGear manage to homage him without one of their trademark screwups.
Appearance (Robot Mode) 5/10
As this shares a mould with
Brawn, this figure suffers from the same defects as him - massive balljoints, crappy plastic and rubbish to non-existent paint apps. This figure is also
laughably large - as big as
Bumblebee - when you consider that this mould was supposed to be somewhere between legends and scout size, you can perhaps appreciate why the detail is quite so sparse. The only difference between Outback and Brawn is the headsculpt, which is pretty decent. However, Outback has a very signature chest, which has not been incorporated at all. When you consider that iGear did at least give
Gears and
Swerve different chests, this smacks of laziness. headsculpts but both are pretty poor. The figure itself is well-proportioned, and evokes the original character successfully. This would've worked pretty well as a scout-sized figure. My main gripe is actually the colour scheme used, I mean all iGear had to do was source some beige and brown plastic. Instead the brown areas are a dirty yellow (suspiciously the exact same shade of yellow as Brawn, perhaps they had some leftovers?) and the beige areas are white. Honestly, this washed-out figure looks like a test shot or a prototype and thankfully the Reprolabels guys have at least made some strides to rescue this spartan figure.
Appearance (Alternate Mode) 5/10
The alternate mode looks quite nice but looks and feels very cheap in hand, again due to the fact it was lazily upscaled. The tyres are nicely sculpted albeit somewhat sparse. This is not helped buy the extremely washed out colour scheme. Outback does come with his signature cannon at least, but in an inspired feat of engineering the cretins at iGear managed to make the cannon handle way too large for either the fist or the tyre hole. I had to shave off an awful lot of plastic just to have the gun fit, which means I could never now sell this piece of junk on even if there was someone as stupid as me who would buy the thing. The reprolabels go some way to improving the look, with nice window stickers which at least provide a splash of colour. A shame, then, that the main colour is wrong.
Transformation 6/10
Outback actually has a nice transformation sequence. The doors slide up and then the sides of the vehicle are pulled out and folded back on themselves to form the legs. The waist is twisted 180 degrees and the arms pull out from the recesses either side of the torso. However, the lower legs are extremely difficult to split apart and given that your only grips are on the wheels, this worries me a lot. I don't want to inadvertently bend a pin holding the wheel in, but this figure puts you exactly in that predicament. This was not an issue with the Brawn figure.
Poseability 7/10
Outback has some tight balljoints, but nothing as bad as
Cosmos. His head is hard to move anyway because of the cavity it sits in. He has ball-jointed shoulders, hips, elbows and knees. His waist swivels. His knee joints are very far up on the leg, although not as bad as RID Ultra Magnus. He has some balance issues due to the tabs which form his 'heels'.
Quality 5/10
Tight and loose balljoints, and parts which are nigh on impossible to separate, coupled with a gun which does not fit and iGear seem to care less and less with every half-assed figure they produce.
Overall - 28/50
This is another crap figure from the iGear stable. I just hope that the remaining 'Mini Warriors' are actually delivered in the scale they were designed for. I'm OK with larger figures if the quality has been upped along with the scale. Unfortunately this is the most representative figure of Outback by some distance. If something else comes along which is a bit nicer, I will chuck this piece of junk in the bin where it belongs. iGear have actually shocked me with this figure, because they have made Brawn seem not so bad in comparison. At least Brawn can hold his damn gun without the use of a scalpel and lots of bits of shredded plastic.
Pathetic.
